Kindle

I love to read.

And I love to own the books that really resonate with me. The big pine bookshelf in our bedroom is completely stuffed and underneath our bed is a sea of storage containers full of even more books. (The books under our bed are mostly Craig’s- he tends to like murder mysteries and I refuse to have that be the last thing I see before I fall asleep.)

We were running out of room in our house to store any more books and I’d been hearing about Kindle this, Nook that, Kobo yada yada yada… I liked the idea of storing thousands of books in the amount of space only one book would use. Ultimately I went with a Kindle because I like Amazon.com, I always use it to find used books & they have great customer service.

I was SO excited to get one. I was going to request it for my birthday in December, but didn’t want to wait the two months (I’m impatient like that). So I went ahead & bought the Kindle 3G (free 3G & Wi-Fi) from a local store where I had some store credit. I’m not a techie AT ALL (please, I still need help with my ipod) so I was relieved to discover how user-friendly the Kindle was. The very first thing I did after it was charged was purchase Pillars of the Earth, by “Ken Follett.” (I’d wanted to read it ever since I saw Oprah talk about it on her show years ago).

It was so easy to do, literally just a few clicks and *poof* it magically appeared on my Kindle. I immediately loved the story & finished it in a few days. I was hungry for more historical fiction, and as I was browsing Amazon/Kindle’s list of free titles (they routinely list the top 100 purchasable & free titles) Outlander caught my eye. What the heck, it was free so I had nothing to lose. I was up until 2:00 am almost every night until I finished the book, I just couldn’t put it down! And somewhere along the way I realized that it was a series, and there were 6 more books to read!! (And Diana Gabaldon is currently writing the as-yet-untitled eighth book due for release in 2013).

Needless to say all I asked for on my birthday was Amazon.com gift cards. I finished the seventh book in January, and have been in Outlander (ok Jamie Fraser) withdrawal ever since. I try to stay connected to the story & characters by sharing the books with my friends. I got my sister hooked, and currently two of our friends are reading the series. Even my husband has read Outlander, he gets how much I love it. Now if they would only make an HBO miniseries about it…But that’s for another post. = )

Outlander was great. I am an Outlander fan, because it obviously is not just a romance. It is a historical fiction/ science fic./ etc. told by a gifted author. Her books are even referred to by Jacobite historians (professors of colleges) because her research is so thorough. How she got to know the Scottish nuances and personalities so well, who knows?

I couldn’t agree more! Just yesterday someone commented on her facebook wall that they were surprised to discover that Diana was American because the Scottish language & detail were so authentic. This was Diana’s response:

“I know a lot of Scots _now_. But to begin with, I read a lot of stuff by Scottish authors, listened to tapes (this was a long time ago ) by Scottish bands (especially live performances) and folk-groups, and paid close attention to BBC programs whenever a Scottish accent showed up.”